Chartism
is traditionally approached from a historical point of view. Consequently,
little attention is usually paid to its literary production: articles,
speeches, novels and poems. This book aims at providing an introduction to
the field of chartist poetry. The author first offers a basic panorama of
those historical aspects necessary to understand the birth of chartist
literature. He then proceeds to describe the main features, influences and
tendencies of chartist poetry, which is no easy task, since until then it had
just been looked at from a purely political point of view. Finally, the
largest section of the book is devoted to analysing a corpus
of poems in terms of their terminology, use of images and resources, as well
as in terms of their main aim: political propaganda. Collado suggests that,
even if the all-important political purpose of this poetry is often
detrimental to its artistic quality, the poems constitute a necessary
intermediate step without which other movements, such as pre-Raphaelite
poetry or social realism, would not have been possible.